VICKSBURG - In a normal year, October would see legislative leaders in lengthy (and boring) hearings on how Mississippi's money will be spent in the 12 months starting July 1, 2006.
This hasn't been a normal year.
Instead, Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck, as chairman, has asked about 30 agency heads to submit their requests in writing. If there are hearings, they will be in November.
It's just hard to do any specific planning.
Some speculate that Katrina will cost the state up to 25 cents of every general fund tax dollar that had been expected in the next eight months. Similar losses could continue well into the next annual cycle. As with many families looking at their own checkbooks, the state's income stream has been rocked as never before.
During the special session called by Gov. Haley Barbour to enact emergency relief measures, lawmakers asked each other what might happen. The answer is, "Nobody knows."
It's hard to imagine some members of the Mississippi Legislature speechless, but many are. Katrina provided another in a string of "unprecedenteds" in recent state fiscal history.
If you remember, the purse was so tight in April that lawmakers adjourned their regular session without even adopting a spending plan for this year. That was unprecedented. And when a special session did result in a plan, it was balanced using every manner and means of fiscal trickery plus draining every dime of reserves. That was unprecedented, too.
"We were broke before Katrina," is how one lawmaker put it.
Turning to the law books isn't comforting.
Mississippi and other states operate their checking accounts like most households. A paycheck comes in one month and goes out to pay the bills the next.
Each fall, an official revenue estimate is prepared by state economists. That estimate establishes a legal cap on allocations.
If the estimate is low, then the extra money is gravy. If the estimate is high - or if something catastrophic like Katrina comes along - there are statutory triggers that command governors to start making cuts.
You can ask Ronnie Musgrove about that. He was unfortunate enough to serve during the first four years of this decade - the same four years when the bloom fell off the national economic rose. During his first year as governor he had the unpopular duty of telling agency heads a fraction of the money they'd been promised would not be delivered. The same situation arose the next year.
The triggers were also supposed to have been tripped during Barbour's first year when the Medicaid deficit approached $268 million, but he took no action and the crisis was averted through other means.
What will be cut in coming weeks, if anything, and how much is simply unknowable.
There are rainbows in the near and not-so-near future.
Already, it appears Mississippi may be exempted by federal authorities from providing matching money for Medicaid costs during post-Katrina recovery. One of two federal mass health-care programs, Medicaid serves one in four Mississippians. The state stands to save about $500 million if the feds pick up the entire tab.
And state revenue will surge once rebuilding the thousands of homes and businesses damaged or destroyed by the storm begins in earnest. Sales tax is collected on every new refrigerator, every piece of plywood, every roofing shingle.
While 75,000 or more Mississippians were left without employment by Katrina, most of those jobs will be back. Perhaps there will even be record low unemployment during the recovery - boosting payroll tax collections.
With Congress already pledging $60 billion in recovery cash to Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, the state will get the normal slice it takes off economic activity - hotel room rentals, sales of vehicles and such.
It's the interim that will be difficult. Ole Miss is counting on state money to pay the heating bill for its classrooms this winter. State troopers will need gas in their tanks. Security officers at the Department of Corrections will want to be paid in December, January, February and afterward - but the till will be running dry.
It's an open question as to whether Congress will write Mississippi a check to cover its normal operating costs. That hasn't been done in past disasters, but lawmakers - even those who maintain big government is the enemy of the people - may turn to Washington hat-in-hand.
After all, what the state faces now is … unprecedented.
